Metcher in court over alleged Auspost incident; Hockey calls for 3%-plus labour productivity growth; RBA says wage growth slowest in a decade, and staying there; and Water picket line leads to $62,000 AMWU payment.
A betting agency's substantial contraventions of the Fair Work Act might not have been exposed if an employee had heeded its warning that she might be dismissed for seeking legal advice, the Federal Court has ruled in awarding her more than $500,000 in damages and compensation for unpaid wages, commissions, interest and superannuation contributions.
A second female manager made redundant by a wholly-owned Australian subsidiary of multinational software company Symantec Corporation has failed to prove her retrenchment was not genuine and that the company dismissed her for taking parental leave.
Unions have warned that workers' best interests will not be at the heart of the O'Farrell Government's plans to review the state's two portable long service leave schemes.
The Australian Public Service Commission has released guidelines on the Abbott Government's public sector freeze, exposing the vulnerability of thousands of "non-ongoing" workers to the blunt edge of its plan to cut 12,000 jobs through "natural attrition".
Qantas will close its heavy maintenance facility in Avalon, Victoria, at the end of March next year and is considering offshoring the work done by the 300 employees who will lose their jobs.
The FWC is considering initiating action against the CFMEU and its officials over right of entry breaches on four Lend Lease sites in Adelaide, but has stopped short of issuing orders to counter union threats of industrial action if the company refused to engage non-working shop stewards and fly the union flag from cranes.
The FWC has accepted that Transfield Services was within its rights to dismiss a cleaner on its NSW Government schools contract who had his school security clearance withdrawn after the State learned he had been convicted of assault three times during his tenure.
